


and worth dying for too

by usingmyoxygen (keithsforeheadtattoo)



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Community: inception_kink, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-30
Updated: 2010-09-30
Packaged: 2017-10-14 19:16:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/152557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keithsforeheadtattoo/pseuds/usingmyoxygen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's a miracle of coincidence that Arthur happens to be on his way back to his apartment at the exact time Eames winds up on the ground outside of a seedy bar with a broken nose and a violent stranger grabbing at his collar.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and worth dying for too

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Wishbone](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/2257) by Richard Siken. 



Upon first meeting him, Arthur analyzes William Eames to be something of an anglerfish. He positively oozes charm and danger and widely interpretable promises -- all of which, Arthur imagines, end in nothing more than the bitter disappointment of winding up caught in his jaws with no hope of escape or resolution. He's keenly aware that any involvement with this sort of a specimen will directly result in being chewed up, spit out, and kicked in the ribs for good measure and yet it never feels like a problem. That's just how Eames works - he could threaten murder to your face and you'd gladly let him do it just to know he's willing to let you play a part.

He works with him first out of necessity. Dom introduces them on the first day of the job, quick and obligatory. Arthur barely remembers the names and the smiles and handshakes, but during their first team meeting Eames offers him a cigarette and when Arthur accepts, Eames lights two in his mouth and then hands one off to him, smirking. This is something Arthur involuntarily remembers for a very long time.

" _Now, Voyager_?" he asks hopefully, and Eames lights up -- "Oh Jerry, don't let's ask for the moon..." he quotes in his closest Bette Davis, and Arthur is aware from this point on that this is a man he certainly won't mind being associated with.

He works with him first out of necessity which balloons out of proportion by the second day he's known him.

It's a miracle of coincidence that Arthur happens to be on his way back to his apartment at the exact time Eames winds up on the ground outside of a seedy bar with a broken nose and a violent stranger grabbing at his collar. Arthur acts on instinct, throws a fist or two at the other party involved, but the man is only the lesser of two drunks, angry but so awful on his feet that he quickly gives in and holds up his hands, backing away.

"You all right?" Arthur asks, attempting to pull Eames to his feet, but he's too heavy and uncoordinated and unwilling.

Eames spits onto the pavement, leaving a thick, red streak.

"I could use a drink," he says and laughs, blood leaking out of his grin.

\- - - -

The first time they have sex is the most distant Arthur has ever felt. From his surroundings, from himself, from everything he'd reassured himself he would not let happen, but in particular from Eames, buried hilt-deep in him and panting like an animal. Even as he's squirming and howling against the other man's calculated wax and wane of pressure, he can only think of Eames's witty comments during their final post-job meeting, Eames's subtly eyebrow-driven expressions, Eames's clumsy but always-legible handwriting. Most of all he thinks of Eames's shirt, laying shucked off in some far corner, and of the way that he'd watched him do it, just watched, paralyzed and sitting on the bed. He thinks of Eames's shirt and of all the hopes he'd felt unravel in loose bunches at his feet as he'd realized how calculated of a move this was; how many times it had been executed before. He doesn't want to look Eames in the eyes and so he doesn't, just lets his head fall to the side and focuses on his shirt in the corner and the disappointment he'd felt at finding out it had been hiding a different man than he'd expected underneath.

\- - - -

He works with him first out of necessity, and then finds himself following hopelessly, aimlessly afterward. Somehow the greater necessity becomes the occasion where he has no real obligation except to his own unidentifiable ache. Somehow this occasion multiplies until it's more of a permanent state.

Arthur has stopped taking jobs because he wants them, but he has not stopped taking jobs.

\- - - -

They've worked three jobs with each other, three in a row with stupid marks and highly plebeian projections. The first two go off without a hitch and, technically speaking, so does the third -- it's just that Arthur winds up so rattled afterward, waking up sweaty and gasping in the warehouse.

Eames was the only one the projections caught on to, and Arthur found him lying in a hallway of the rapidly burning schoolhouse that signaled the collapse of the dream.

"We get what we need?" he asked, but Arthur couldn't look at him because he was battered and bloodied and it was getting all too familiar.

Arthur collects his things in such a hurry after the job that even Dom sizes him up with concern, asking after his condition with a brief, questioning call of his name. Arthur doesn't respond, just books it out the door. He needs to leave, he tells himself, but then there is no more powerful a thing in his world at this moment than Eames's voice beckoning after him. He feels his steps slow before he can think not to let himself do it.

"I've got time and money if you'd like drinks."

Eames's nose still hasn't healed all the way, and Arthur examines the slight, unnatural crook to it.

"Come on. Second time I've been done over in a month and you've got me out of both of them. I owe you."

Arthur physically stiffens against the offer to balance out the part of his resolve he knows is melting.

\- - - -

They end up fucking after every job except Fischer, when Arthur just watches Eames over his shoulder at baggage claim. He refuses to be the one to initiate but decides that this time, this time that he promises himself will be the last, he'll accept if it's offered.

Instead, he just watches him leave.

\- - - -

Arthur is determined to not let himself get hurt too badly. He works one other job and doesn't even attempt to process his reaction when he meets their forger, an unassuming redhead with what Cobb calls "a lot of promise". He just focuses on the job, restrains his muscles to keep back the cringe that attempts to shoot through him as the forger happens to take on a blonde woman that hits too close to home, and leaves for Beirut as soon as he's done.

When he finds himself with one missed call and two unanswered texts months later, he is terrified to read them out of fear that he'll answer.

 _youre in lebanon?_  
says the first.

 _bella riva suite 124. for your reference_  
says the second.

He doesn't answer, but he finds himself in a hotel hallway an hour later, standing aimlessly outside the door and letting himself fill with panic like pooling water. He wants to run but instead he does what he always does when he's terrified and plows ahead.

\- - - -

Arthur ghosts fingers over Eames's back and can't help but smile as he leaves a trail of goosebumps in his wake. There's a pointed glee in knowing that in this realm where nothing matters but the basic, feral involuntaries of human sense, he holds equal sway. It's probably the reason, too, why he leaves feeling as though the shower had stripped him clean of all memory, leaving him with only vaguely pieced-together recollections. Eames always winds up in control, and any situation that proves otherwise never feels real.

\- - - -

It's only two weeks or so afterward that he calls up Cobb in search of work. The "promising" young man that had forged for them before is gone without explanation and before he even arrives, Arthur is sure of what this means.

It isn't as painful as he'd played it out to be in his head, but then maybe that's because of how much weight he'd planned on giving it. Eames expertly coasts as though it's nothing at all to him. Arthur attempts the same. He hopes he pulls it off. He hopes that's what Eames is doing as well but the constant ease in the other man's expression sets alight a doubt in Arthur that is unquenchable and very, very final. He knows the answer. What Eames comes here for is a vastly buried mystery, but he knows it hasn't the slightest to do with him. (He buries this thought just as deeply.)

\- - - -

Arthur decides he won't be the one to leave this time. He sprawls, limp, in a vague imitation of sleep and listens to the other man shift and wake and dress and go.

There is a pause between the door unlocking and the door opening. Arthur rolls over as it clicks shut, exhaling into the covers and letting himself imagine that in that short and silent span of time, Eames had looked back.

He staggers into the bathroom after this and forces himself into the shower. This was never supposed to happen and now he's ashamed and afraid all the time.

Eames made him beg, he reflects, staring himself down in the steamed-over mirror for an uncomfortable few seconds. And he did it. He begged with all the energy he had left to devote to hopeless pursuits and came without a name on his lips, just a violent desperation of _please, please, please_. (And Eames asked if that was what he wanted, and Arthur rolled over onto his stomach because where was there to even begin.)

\- - - -

Arthur has always been a man of routine, but it's around the seventh time or so that he allows himself to change. The second they're finished he's scrambling back into his clothes, fighting off the twinge of gratification he feels as the tables turn and he's the one being called after, followed with curious glances.

"Oh, come on, you've got to be tired," Eames croons as Arthur fishes for the the key card in his coat pocket.

Arthur identifies in this moment with Cobb, with his constant hesitation around his projections of Mal, his aversions to killing her. She wasn't real, he knew she wasn't, but as long as she was real enough to call out after him --

"Exhausted," Arthur says cordially, and shuts the door behind him.

He has always been a man of routine, but above all else he is a man of sharp decision.

\- - - -

Three weeks later, Arthur gets another call as though their previous interaction had been par for the course. He answers in spite of himself. The voice on the other line is lower and huskier than usual and he can hear the lilt of whiskey play across his syllables.

"Some sort of work in Marseilles," he offers up simply, "and I know how you and Dom both like your pastis..."

Arthur hasn't touched a glass of it in years, but it makes him smile and hurt all the same, knowing Eames still stores that memory somewhere. He politely declines, and shuts his eyes, pressing a fist loosely against his forehead as he listens to the responding drunken pleading. It's all he can do not to book down to the airport right now, so he runs that same tone through his head in desperation, matching it to any number of previous situations. He can imagine that same entreating voice asking Ariadne for a set of labyrinths that are quicker to solve; asking Dom if by any chance could he please have more time to study the way the mark's father walks before the next practice run? He can imagine that voice has been applied to so many nameless barwhore faces, pressed against so many temples and in so many ears. All he needs is a point man and there are plenty of those. Whenever Eames needs anything, it always seems to be available to him in abundance. Arthur won't be trashing anyone's plans if he turns him down. Arthur probably wasn't his first choice, in any case.

"Do you want it? Do you want anything I have?" The words leave his mouth before he has the time to make the connections.

Eames doesn't say anything but Arthur can hear from the steady buzz filtering through the speaker that he is still on the other line.

So much is lost at this point and Eames is drunk and he's already said too much so it doesn't matter what comes next.  
"This is where the evening splits in half," he quotes in another fragment and lets it settle in the phone-static until the inevitable surge of embarrassment tears through him and he hangs up.

 

_I swear, I end up feeling empty, like you've taken something out of me, and I have to search_

_my body for the scars, thinking_

_Did he find that one last tender place to sink his teeth in? I know you want me to say it, Henry,_

_it's in the script, you want me to say Lie down on the bed, you're all I ever wanted_

_and worth dying for too_

_but I think I'd rather keep the bullet this time. It's mine, you can't have it, see,_

_I'm not giving it up. This way you still owe me, and that's_

_as good as anything._

**Author's Note:**

> the stuff arthur quotes at the end/the stuff in italics at the veryvery end/the title/the basis for this entire piece is from "wishbone" by richard siken.
> 
> this also was from a prompt on the inception kink meme over at lj; the prompt was a line from the poem ("'cause i couldn't make you love me and i'm tired of pulling your teeth")


End file.
